Digital Business Ecosystem

Good morning, everybody! I’m here to talk about Digital Business Ecosystem

My name is Henri Bergius, I’m from Finland and I’ve been a Free Software
developer since 1997

I’ve been involved in several projects like the Midgard CMS and OpenPsa,
a free management software suite. Before these “serious” projects I was
also working on some Quake total conversions

In 2001 I became an entrepreneur when we started Nemein, a Free Software
development consultancy

We’ve worked with both clients in Europe, and done several development
aid projects in Africa and Eastern Europe

HEL/POA

I’m really happy to be again here in Brazil. Not only because of the reasons
apparent from these two photos, but also because you have such an interesting
and energetic Free Software community here

I have been to Brazil once before, when I attended the Forum GNOME event in
Curitiba and OpenBeach in Floripa last November

I would like to thank the organizers of FISL, and also Izabel Valverde for
letting me speak here today

DBE in a nutshell

Digital Business Ecosystem, or DBE in short is a huge Free Software project
funded by the European Union

There are dozens of companies and universities participating. For example,
IBM, Sun and Intel have all assigned full-time developers to work on the
project

In addition to the big players, several small companies working on Free
Software business applications have been funded to integrate their
applications

DBE project was started couple years ago, and the first running version of
the software was released in summer 2005 through Sourceforge

The reason why European Union started this project is to make local small
business more efficient through providing tools for companies to work with
each other

DBE components

The Digital Business Ecosystem software comes in three parts, some of which
are running in the background of evere DBE installation, and some that only
software developers use

First of all, there is the Execution Environment, the heart of every DBE
installation. It provides a Java Server-Client for running the installed
DBE services

The Execution Environment is based on the Fada network. Fada is
a scale-free Peer-to-Peer network for connecting business applications
that was originally developed for the tourist industry in Spain

In addition to the Execution Environment, there is the Evolutionary
Environment which provides tools for connecting different services, and
analyzing the health of the network

There are grand plans for the Evolutionary Environment, including
automatically finding best suitable business partners and services,
but much of this is still experimental artificial intelligence stuff
under work

For developers, there is the Service Factory, a suite of tools built
on top of the Eclipse IDE for building services and defining business
models and terminologies

Business Ecosystem example

Ok, so what exactly is a business ecosystem?

Here I’m showing a simple example of a business ecosystem: the
connections between a car rental company and its partners

White lines are services offered by a business, and red lines are services
used by a business

The car rental company provides services like car rental and
valet parking to hotels

And it consumes services like repairs from mechanics, advertising
services, and accounting services

So as you can see, even a relatively simple small business
has connections with many different services and companies

Why do we need a Digital Ecosystem?

So why is DBE needed. Why do we need a digital ecosystem anyway?

Connections1

All business is connections between people. It is connections between
different companies

Now most of these connections happen over telephone, in meetings and
especially using the big business integrator: email

Now, how many of you receive too much email?

Connections2

But the big issue is that business software doesn’t connect. You can’t
take your CRM system and share a client contact with your partners,
or automatically collect bids from ten print shops in Porto Alegre for
these conference t-shirts

So, you’re left with browsing web sites, sending lots of email, faxes
and making telephone calls. This is time consuming if you’re trying to
find the best suitable partner from a collection of dozens of different
companies

DBE could help here by providing a common infrastructure for different
business applications to communicate with

Laptop1

In the past there have been several initiatives for enabling business
software to connect. EDI, Web Services and BizTalk come to mind.

None of these have really taken off yet. The big problem is that
they all rely on statically defined connections and interfaces between
companies

Static connections work well when you’re doing the same, well-defined
things with same partners all the time over years

But they don’t work so well in a constantly changing business environment
where partners and procedures and terminologies change

Laptop2

However, most of the business done in the world is done by small businesses.
These are businesses that don’t have IT departments, don’t have server
infrastructure, and might actually be constantly on the move, changing
from network to another, from supplier to another, and from business
procedure to another

For them the statically defined world of Web Services isn’t enough. They
need to be able to set up connections quickly and automatically with partners
using different technologies, different levels of infrastructure, and
different terminology

Here DBE can again help. The Fada network used in DBE can set up connections
between companies automatically regardless on what network they’re on at
the moment. And the ontology system of DBE’s evolution environment helps
to connect different terminologies with each other.

Free Software opportunity

Fixing these problems could be a major opportunity for the Free Software
movement

The big proprietary software vendors with their established business models
have hard time collaborating with each others

But for us, collaboration is the natural way of working. No Free Software
project can be successful without collaboration

If we make our software talk with each other, we can easily leapfrog the
competition, and provide a benefit proprietary software will have difficulties
to beat. But this means different projects must talk with each other.

Initiatives like the Freedesktop.org project have proven cross-project
collaboration is possible

DBE in Brazil

So how can you get started with DBE here in Brazil?

First of all, it would be important to find the local business cases,
find the “low hanging fruit” that would really benefit from more efficient
connections and communications

Then recognize what Free Software applications they are or could
be using, and find out how those could be integrated. And then simply
integrate them to the DBE network

Of course, training would probably be needed. We’ve been running some
training sessions for software developers interested in integrating
their applications with DBE in Finland

In Europe the initial such efforts have been funded by the European
Union to get the ball rolling.

Here in Brazil it could happen with regular funding from customers,
or the government could get involved

Microenterprise and globalization

The reason for government to get involved is to support the local
small business, or “microenterprise”

In globalizing world, huge corporations can move their operations
easily to wherever it is most beneficial at the moment. To China,
to India, to Vietnam, causing huge problems with unemployment.

But small businesses are relatively local, and loyal to the area
they’re working in. Their revenues stay in the local economy, boosting
it, and they generate local employment

Small companies adapt faster

In addition to keeping the money closer to home, an ecosystem of small
companies also boosts the economy by being faster to adapt to changes
than big corporations can be.

And big number of small businesses is much safer than few huge ones.
Sometimes a business fails, but if it only employs some dozen people
it doesn’t yet ruin an economy. And if the local business ecosystem is
strong, these people will quickly find new employment or start companies
of their own

WSIS 2005

Here’s a picture I received just before my previous DBE presentation
in Curitiba last November

It seems that the Brazilian government is at least aware of the DBE
project to some degree, and seems supportive of its goals

So maybe government support is coming. But even then, if I were you,
I’d start looking for potential applications and businesses to integrate
with the Digital Business Ecosystem

It can be a challenging project, but it can also bring good money,
and be lots of fun too

Finally

So, finally…

Try DBE in practice

If you want to try out DBE in practice, there is an application
called OpenPsa

It is a Free Software project management and CRM suite that enables
consultants to share tasks and work reports across the DBE network

Networked project management

With OpenPsa you can easily collaborate with your partners and
subcontractors. Each can use their own servers, their own management
tools, but still have access to all the status and billing information
about the project

I've spent the last two days in the Digital Business Ecosystem (DBE) Workshop arranged by Hermia Science Park in Tampere. DBE is an EU-funded Open Source technology for enabling small and medium-sized enterprises to work together in P2P fashion.